WASHINGTON — To prevent collisions in space, nations with advanced orbital monitoring abilities need to share data with each other. Russia, being skilled in space situational awareness (SSA), should be part of the global effort to protect the space environment, experts said March 15 at the Satellite 2018 conference here. “When we tend to talk about international SSA, we tend to focus on ‘friends and family’ type of people,” said Victoria Samson, Washington office director for the Secure World Foundation, a U.S. nonprofit focused on space sustainability. “The Russians have an…

Asteroid EB4 is creeping ever closer to the unaware planet with every passing second, threatening a close orbital approach as the asteroid rushes towards Earth at breakneck of nearly 13kms or more than 29,000mph. Scientists estimate the monstrous asteroid ranges anywhere from 21 to 52-metres in diameter. The latest orbital data collected by NASA shows EB4 is on a path which will skim past Earth in the early morning hours of Friday, March 16. According to NASA’s close approach data, EB4 will arrive around 5.59am UTC. EB4 is expected to…

A mosaic of the moon’s made from hundreds of imagesNASA/GSFC/Arizona State University By Richard Kemeny AI is looking skyward. An artificial intelligence algorithm has learned to identify craters on the moon, discovering thousands of new ones in the process. Craters are geological fingerprints left behind by impacting space debris, such as comets or asteroids. Tectonic activity and weathering have wiped most of the Earth’s surface craters clean, but the moon is still covered in them—many of which date back billions of years. Even from afar, the size distribution and number…

The massive eight tonne ‘space lab’ named Tiangong-1 vanished from China’s eyes in March 2016, and experts had failed to relocate it. However, authorities have now tracked it down and predict that it will come hurtling back towards Earth before the end of this month. Experts have been unable to pinpoint where the craft could land, but as it approaches Earth, there is a very realistic chance it could hit Michigan where almost 10 million people live. According to Michigan website MLive says Lower Michigan falls “into the regions listed…

WASHINGTON — Effective Space Solutions, a company developing spacecraft that can extend the lives of telecommunications satellites, has arranged to launch its first two spacecraft on a Russian Proton rocket in 2020. International Launch Services (ILS), the U.S.-based commercial arm of Proton’s manufacturer Khrunichev, is facilitating the launch, ILS announced March 12. U.K.-based Effective Space is building life-extension spacecraft called Space Drones that have a mass of 400 kilograms each. The two Space Drones launching on Proton will reach orbit via rideshare, piggybacking on a mission with a larger customer,…

GETTY NASA space defence: The HAMMER spacecraft could deliver nuclear bombs to rogue asteroids The ever present threat of speeding asteroids from the depths of space weighs heavily on the minds of the word’s greatest scientists. Rogue asteroids have led to global-level extinction events in the past, having wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. According to NASA’s chief asteroid hunter, Paul Chodas, near-Earth objects (NEOs) “continue to pose a hazard” to the planet. At the moment, there are well over 1,800 asteroids out there in space, described…

The rogue space station is expected to descend towards the planet below sometime in April, but the exact path of its re-entry remains a mystery. According to the US Aerospace Corporation, Tiangong-1 will crash land in April and the European Space Agency (ESA) estimates a crash been March 24 and April 19. Scientists warned they cannot say for certain where the station will land in the coming weeks. The abandoned module is currently tracking over the planet at an altitude of 150 miles, circling the globe at breakneck speeds of…

The massive eight tonne ‘space lab’ named Tiangong-1 vanished from China’s eyes in March 2016, and experts had failed to relocate it. However, authorities have now tracked it down and predict that it will come hurtling back towards Earth before the end of this month. The majority of the satellite is set to burn up in the atmosphere but experts believe that junk weighing as much as 100 kilograms could make it to the surface. And that is not the only potential damage the crashing satellite could cause. Tiangong-1 contains…

Though scientists say the likelihood of arriving in parts of Europe, US, Australia and New Zealand are high, they cannot predict where it will hit. The US-funded Aerospace Corporation estimates Tiangong-1 will re-enter the atmosphere around the first week of April, but it could arrive even sooner than that. The European Space Agency says the module will descend between the 24th of March and 19th of April. China admitted it had lost control of Tiangong-1 in 2016 and said they would be unable to perform a controlled re-entry. The statement…

Experts disagree on how aliens might try to contact humans. There is a large assumption that if there is alien life out there in the universe, and they are trying to talk to us, they might use the same type of technology that we use here on Earth to communicate. This could be through a variety of ways including radio signals and flashes of light. Because humans are creating more technology produced noise than ever, we are undermining our ability to detect potential alien transmission. Scientists have revealed that aliens…